


Baby Pictures

by beenomorph



Series: new and old [2]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 21:22:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11677326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beenomorph/pseuds/beenomorph
Summary: “You got any baby pictures?” he said, big brown eyes looking up at Kallo from underneath thick lashes, a soft smile painting his features and dimpling his cheeks.“Baby pictures?” Kallo echoed, incredulous half-grin painting his features.“Yeah-- like, pictures of you as a baby?”“I know what baby pictures are, I just…” Kallo tilted his head to the side, “Why?”





	Baby Pictures

**Author's Note:**

> another fic abt kallo and ryder and nostalgia. enjoy

“Hey, Kallo,” Scott said, drawing Kallo from his rapt focus on the vid screen before him. He sat comfortably on the couch in Scott’s quarters on the Nexus, legs curled up to his chest, soft blanket draped over his shoulders, a steaming mug of tea warming his hands. He supposed it wasn’t really _Scott’s_ quarters, not anymore-- the small Nexus apartment _was_ registered under Scott’s name, but it was just as much Kallo’s as it was his.

( _Kallo remembers the day the definition shifted in his head between what was_ his _and what was_ theirs _, a cheesy action movie played on screen as they sat together on the couch, a comfortable tangle of limbs, the artificial lights had dimmed down to replicate nighttime, a fan in the corner filling the room with white noise. “_ Stay _,” Scott had mumbled, speech muddled from sleep as Kallo, thinking Scott to be asleep, rose to find his way back towards his own quarters, “_ Just for tonight.” _He had stayed a lot longer than just that night_.)

“Scott?” Kallo responded, mirroring the other’s inflection as he paused playback on the show he was watching, turning his head to look over the back of the couch and frowning at how Scott sat cross-legged on the countertop. Beside him was a large, cardboard box, filled haphazardly with half-crumpled papers, one of the many they’d pulled from Alec’s offices and cargo. Scott hadn’t had the time for the past few months to really go through his father’s things-- the time nor the emotional energy, between the disbelief over the loss of his father, worrying over Sara’s comatose state, and the pitfalls of the Initiative keeping him busy. It was only now, after everything was handled, after Meridian was secure and the Pathfinder team was given a moment to catch their breath, that Scott and Sara began the process of cataloging their father’s things.

It was hard on him, Kallo could tell- even after everything that’d happened, Scott still had trouble dealing with the reality of his father’s loss. ( _“You’re supposed to get closure, you know,” Scott had said once, the back of Kallo’s shirt balled in his fists in frustration, tears threatening to spill, from where his face was buried in the curve of Kallo’s chest, “You’re supposed to be able to work through all this shit_ before _they die.”_ )

Currently, Scott had a handful of small, white squares of paper in his hands and a soft, far away look on his face-- Kallo knew that face, the careful cocktail of sorrow and comfort and distant nostalgia, the face Scott made when remembering the Milky Way, when remembering his father.

“You got any baby pictures?” he said, big brown eyes looking up at Kallo from underneath thick lashes, a soft smile painting his features and dimpling his cheeks.

“Baby pictures?” Kallo echoed, incredulous half-grin painting his features,

“Yeah-- like, pictures of you as a baby?”

“I know what baby pictures are, I just…” Kallo tilted his head to the side, “Why?”

“Found some of mine,” Ryder says, flipping between the pieces of paper in his hands as he slid off the counter, climbing over the back of the chair and brandishing the photographs like a sword. He held the first one out-- Kallo recognized Alec Ryder immediately, despite him being a handful of decades younger, his brain lagged for a moment on Ellen, a woman he’d only recognized from photographs.

“This is me and Sara right after we were born,” Ryder says, smiling fondly at the photo, “That’s my mom and dad but, you knew that.” He flipped forwards a few photos, handing one to Kallo, “Bet you can’t tell which is which.” he hummed, mischievous smirk on his face.

“It’s not like it’s hard- adult humans hardly look any different than their infantile counterparts, after all!” Kallo chuckled, leaning forwards to deposit his mug on the coffee table, scrutinizing the photo for just a moment, “That one, the one on the right, that’s you.”

“What do you mean ‘it’s not like it’s--’ _I_ can’t even tell which is which in this photo half the time!” Scott laughed, incredulously, playfully snatching the photo out of Kallo’s hands and squinting at it himself. “Ugh. You’re right, by the way. I always have to look for the--”

“Birthmark,” Kallo finished, sly grin painting his face as he leaned forward, tapping the photo once. “The one on your chest. You think I’d forget?” he teases, and Scott just rolls his eyes, leaning back against the seat once more and continuing to flip through pictures.

“I wouldn’t be so lucky,” Scott huffed, shifting closer to Kallo so they could both see the pictures as he flipped through them. There were few of Alec- several of the twins as babies, a large chunk of photos from a hazily recounted camping trip, the twins old enough to eat s’mores and toddle around in water wings.

“You couldn’t swim?” Kallo asks, genuine surprise in his voice, tilting his head to the side.

“No! I was a _baby_ !” Scott responded, laughing at a photo of him in ankle-deep water decked out in a snorkel and floatie, his curly hair frizzing out in all directions as it dried unevenly,  “Human babies can’t swim. I mean, we instinctively hold our breaths or something, so you could probably _teach_ a baby how to swim, but-” He was interrupted by a burst of laughter from Kallo as he flipped to the next photo- this one of Sara, smiling her same crooked grin even as a child, though with substantially less teeth, held up the camera by a smiling Alec Ryder as she brandished a muddy mason jar with a fat frogling swimming about inside.

“ _That_ looks more like one of my baby pictures,” Kallo giggled, holding one hand up to his face to hide his curling grin at the incredulous look that passed over Scott’s features, “Well, I always knew Earth amphibians beared a certain resemblance to Salarians, but it _is_ a little uncanny.”

“Alright,” Scott says, interest lost entirely in his own photos, “Alright, you’ve done it now. You’ve _piqued_ my curiosity- I’ve gotta see one.” his expression was solemn as he nodded at Kallo, who just clicked his tongue, drawing up his omni-tool to look through the sparse files he’d brought with him to Andromeda. Not many photos- there wasn’t much of a point in photos with a memory as sharp as his- mostly just statistics regarding to the Tempest and countless episodes of his favorite vids from the Milky Way.

“It’s unlikely that I even _have_ a baby photo,” Kallo said, after a moment, “Could you not just… Search on the extranet for a picture of a larval salarian?”

“I _could,”_ Scott said, smirk painting his features, “But where’s the fun in _that_?”

Silence drifted between them for a moment before Kallo started, humming a triumphant “A- _ha!”_ and clicking through few more attachments.

“I thought I remembered-- One of my brothers, he sent me this before I shipped of for Andromeda. He was really… He cared about stuff like this. Photos, videos, recorded memories.”

“Baby pictures?” Scott ventured, excitement in his voice thinly veiled as he scooted closer to Kallo, resting his head on Kallo’s shoulder. At first, this type of physical contact made Kallo bristle- he was never the touchy type, and while Scott is generally respectful of that it was always abundantly clear that he _was._ In the presence, Kallo tilted his own head, resting his cheek on the soft pilow Scott’s hair made as he pulled up the photo.

“Baby pictures,” Kallo confirmed, pulling up the first image in the gallery.

He smiled fondly, remembering the day in a haze.

( _He was young, then, his darker, simpler coloration striped with the reflection of sunlight off the water, half-climbed up onto a rocky ledge that half surrounded the incubation pool, large eyes scrunched from the force of his wide, mostly-toothless grin, his skinny limbs still ultimately useless as he scrabbled over slick rock, surrounded by brothers attempting to make the same ill-fated climb. He remembers the photo being taken, turning to smile at one of his uncles as the holo snapped, but the action took him off balance- he was still unused to his arms and legs at the time, having just grown them, and him slipping back down into the water caused a chain reaction that sent most of his brothers tumbling back down with him._ )

“Is that _you?”_ Scott said, breaking him from his memory as he pointed at one of the babies in the photo, and Kallo blinked a few times as he was brought back to the present, “You’re kidding me. That’s _you?”_

“Actually,” Kallo said, using his free arm to adjust the trajectory of Scott’s aim, “ _That_ one’s me.”

“ _That’s_ you, then? Damn. You were right-- compared to Salarians, human babies look exactly the same as human adults. You’re not just fucking with me and showing me a picture of some little creature from Sur’Kesh and telling me it’s you as a baby, are you?”

“Why would you think _that?”_ Kallo laughed, flicking through a few more of the photos, warm nostalgia bubbling in his chest at the images of family.

“Look-- that photo, right there- stop scrolling! You have a _tail.”_

“Well, yes, but I grew out of it. Some Salarians don’t, you know, I have a sister who’s tail never resorbed!”

“And you’re a _totally_ different color, now?” Scott said, gesturing once more at the photograph.

“Obviously,” Kallo hummed sarcastically, “Typically, we don’t get our adult coloring for a few years after metamorphosis. It’s one of the reasons it’s speculated our memories came to be so good- it wouldn’t be unrealistic for one clutch to look nearly identical to another,”

“Well, typically,” Scott said, “We humans stay the same color for most of our entire lives, give or take,” he chuckled, reaching up to tap the holographic interface, urging Kallo to continue perusing through his childhood photos.

“I’m glad your brother sent you this,” Scott said, after a pause in their conversation, “Were the two of you close?”

Kallo hummed again, stopping his scrolling on a picture of the two of them, long and gangly with the awkward lack of grace on land that categorized adolescence, bright grins on their faces, arms slung over each other’s shoulders. It was the last photo in the album.

“Enios," Kallo said, quietly, “His name was Enios. I called him Eni, sometimes, he called me Kay.” A pause. “We were very close. I wish… The last time we ever spoke had  been an argument, before I left, about me leaving.”

“He didn’t want you to go to Andromeda?”

“No,” Kallo laughed, a sad sound “He was upset he couldn’t go with me. He was always knee-deep in breeding contracts and family responsibilities- things he couldn’t leave behind.”

A heavy silence drifted between them again, and Scott slowly took Kallo’s hand, lacing their fingers together despite the awkwardness caused by their differentiating hand shapes. Finally, Kallo sighed, smile returning to his face, “I’m glad he sent me these, too. And…” he squeezed Scott’s hand gently as the human rubbed his thumbs along the back of Kallo’s knuckles, “I’m glad to have shared some of these memories with you.”

“Losing them isn’t easy,” Scott agreed, looking back down at the photo of his sister, absentmindedly stroking the corner over his smiling father’s face, “But it’s… Nice, to be able to remember them like this.”

“That it is,” Kallo said quiety, letting his eyes drift shut, losing himself to memories of sunlight bouncing off water, “That it is.”


End file.
